“The secret of rhythmic playing” [I pause briefly, for emphasis], “is to be as late as possible while still playing in time.” This is a maxim I have repeated hundreds of times. In fact, it is the only verbatim quote I knowingly use in my teaching. And I credit my source: Leon Fleisher. Although he [Read more...]
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My recent post “Imagery, Emotion, and Imagination” elicited many wonderful comments. In particular, Seymour Bernstein’s opening statement is especially consonant with my thinking: “This advice of listing adjectives can be extremely helpful to students. But unless one makes a physical connection to musical feeling, all the adjectives in the world and spoken metaphors at lessons [Read more...]
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In his opening address for the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy (NCKP) this past July, Pete Jutras told of the great number of adults he encounters who say, “I used to play piano.” He said that this really translates into, “I was a renter.” Pete exhorted us to get our students to ‘own’ the process of making [Read more...]
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Cultivating vibrant performance through descriptive adjectives and metaphors Karl-Ulrich Schnabel once shared the story of his work with a very fine pianist from the Pacific Rim. She was technically accomplished and musically well-informed – “but her playing was dull.” He assigned her to create a list of one hundred adjectives and to experiment with applying them to [Read more...]
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Nolan came for a first lesson and explained how he habitually learned music: he put the metronome on and played a passage “in time” with it, gradually speeding up along with the steady click-click-click. He felt good about this approach, feeling that he could learn fairly quickly “up to about two-thirds of the real tempo” [Read more...]
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Alan, a young man with a Bachelor’s in piano performance degree from a small college, recently contacted me. (He’d be in central New York for several weeks staying with family—could he take a couple of lessons with me?) He said he was eager to gain a new perspective on how he was playing. After he [Read more...]
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In a few days, I’ll perform a recital (“Preludes to The Preludes”) that includes preludes by Prokofiev, Scriabin, Benshoof, Kabalevsky, and Rachmaninoff; Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 101; and Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28 at the Everson Museum in Syracuse. It’s been over two and a half years since I played a full solo recital. Among the [Read more...]
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Thomas is a 16-year-old intermediate pianist from a small, rural community who recently transferred to my studio after eight years of study. At his first lesson, I picked up his arm above the keyboard and asked him to allow me to support his weight. When I let go, his arm stayed up in the air. [Read more...]
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We’re proud to announce that 3-D Piano has been honored with the 2011 Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award by Music Teachers National Association (MTNA). MTNA established the award in 2001 to recognize an individual or group who has made a significant and unique contribution to keyboard pedagogy. Past winners include such renowned pedagogues as Maurice [Read more...]